


felix culpa

by ghoulfern



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Love, M/M, No Sex, cutie pies and their cute latin, idk how to tag lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 22:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16458170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulfern/pseuds/ghoulfern
Summary: qui non vult fieri desidiosus, amet | let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love





	felix culpa

It was raining hard, the atmosphere nauseating and green, when Arcade looked across the fire and realized just how deeply he was treading in the ceaseless muck of love.  He’d been suspecting it, for a while, felt it lurking, persistent, in the back of his head. 

Mika was holding a pot over the flame, stirring the Instamash and chattering away rather cheerfully about how their tarp probably wouldn’t hold for the entirety of the storm, that they should just find a nice cave somewhere and stay down there forever.  His dark eyes flicked up to Arcade once, twice, but it was the third time that Arcade had _felt_ it, an electric jolt somewhere in his stomach— _brutum fulmen—_ and he’d had to look away, preoccupy himself with organizing their supplies even though they were already neatly packed away in his bag, and Arcade knew that, and Mika knew it, too.  Of course Mika knew it. 

“You okay?” Mika whispered, his hand pausing in its steady stirring.  Arcade glanced up; Mika was watching him now, carefully, and in the firelight, Arcade could count the moles dotting his face: six, not counting the ghostly scar of the one on his jaw, burnt off by some Sentry bot a few weeks earlier.  It had been Arcade’s favorite.  “You seem distant.”

“I’m fine,” Arcade said, his manic fingers finally stilling over his supplies.  He pulled his hands away, reluctantly, and laid them stiffly in his lap.  “Just feeling a little sick, I guess.  You know.”

Mika smiled at him, his youthful face brightening beneath the sheer indominable force of it, and Arcade faltered in smiling back.  How could he match it?  And, anyway, he felt himself truly only capable of leaping across the fire and knocking the Instamash across the tent in a love-addled frenzy.  He craved to take Mika’s face in his hands and kiss every last ounce of breath out of him.  It was a need so sudden and all-encompassing he couldn’t understand how he had ignored it for so long. 

“You look a little more than sick,” Mika said quietly.  He’d abandoned the pot entirely, for favor of leaning back against his elbows on his bedroll, and with the shift in position, his eyes grew shadowed.  They still caught the fire, still glittered, still made Arcade’s _everything_ sizzle with dreamy static.  “Would you…” Mika paused, looking away from Arcade for the first time, his sharp features drawn into something akin to uncertainty.  It was strange to see, on his face.  Mika was always so sure of himself.  Arcade was about to say something, maybe ask if _he_ was okay, when Mika glanced up at him again, almost shyly, and laughed.  It was merry and light, like a sweet melody, but it was gone too quickly.  “Would you, um, come over here?” Mika asked, softly. 

Arcade swallowed so hard that it hurt his throat.  “What?” he repeated stupidly, and Mika, God, he laughed _again_. 

“Come _over_ here,” he said, a little louder, and he patted the ground next to him for emphasis.  “You keep looking at me like that.  It’s driving me insane.  You always say that thing, what is it—” He snapped his fingers in an effort to jog his memory, and then, triumphantly, he said: “ _Ex nihilo nihil fit_ ,” around a sly grin.  _From nothing comes nothing._ “C’mon, ‘Cade.”

Arcade, feeling remarkably foolish, crawled around the fire and sat down beside Mika, making sure to leave a respectable amount of space between their bodies and wishing all the while that he knew just quite what was going on.  It felt as if he were in a dream of his own making, something that surely couldn’t be real.  The radstorm rumbling outside just served to made it feel stranger, even mystical.

“ _Arcade_ ,” Mika said, and Arcade turned to look down at him.  Mika was smiling, still, with that ridiculous, adorable little gap in between his two front teeth, and Arcade relaxed minutely, melting into it.  It took him an exceptionally long moment to register what Mika said next: “You know I’m in love with you too, right?”

“I—what?” Arcade croaked, eventually.  Usually, when he didn’t understand something, it was a quick road to working it out; there were steps that he could follow, familiar pathways he could feel for.  There was _nothing_ here, nothing he could grip onto to steady himself. 

Mika readjusted his body so that he was propped up on one hand, facing Arcade.  The other hand had, somehow without him noticing, made it to Arcade’s arm.  Mika tilted his head to the side and his curls jostled, falling delicately over his forehead.  “You heard me, you dunce,” he murmured, and he was suddenly so close to him that Arcade could smell the Berry Mentats on his breath.  “I love you, I do, and it feels—it feels like it’s always been there.”  His voice was nervous, edging on something rambling. 

Arcade shifted closer, his heart fluttering madly against his ribcage.  He could remember the moment.  Mika, his bright, smiley face falling into dismay at the sight of a sun-scorched body in their path, laying unceremoniously out in the open.  Arcade had bit back the words _leave it_ and watched as Mika dropped his pack to the ground without a second thought, rushed toward the body.  He bent over it, brushed the straw-like hair out of their face, whispered something Arcade couldn’t catch.  And then he’d carefully dragged the body, while Arcade watched, beneath a tree, out of the unrelenting sun.  _It’s not much_ , he’d said, looking up at Arcade with his big, kind eyes, _but I had to move them.  Someplace a little better, at least._ It had been only two weeks into knowing Mika, but it had been enough. 

“Me too,” said Arcade, his voice barely able to breach a faint murmur. 

Their noses brushed, and Mika whispered, “ _Omnia vincit amor_.” 

“ _Et nos cedamus amori_ ,” Arcade answered, automatically, soft and careful as an incantation, and, finally, tilted his face forward to catch Mika’s lips in a kiss. 

It felt like sunshine coming in through a broken window, hazy and blissfully warm.  He reached up to tangle his fingers into Mika’s unruly hair, pulling him closer, closer, closer.  Their teeth smashed together, and they giggled into each other’s mouths, hands frantically darting, tracing out new routes like cartographers, like teenagers.  Arcade swore he must have whispered _I love you_ a thousand times, but Mika could have said it too, their voices intertwining, tendrils of smoke rising from the same source. 

The Instamash burned, the fire shrank and fizzled out.  Eventually, the storm lifted, but they stayed beneath their little blue tarp well into the night and the next morning, their laughter carrying across the Mojave, like wisps, like pockets of captured light. 

**Author's Note:**

> this was just a sweet lil short thing that i wrote to test out my new FAVE ship, my god how have i gone so long w/o knowing how much i adore arcade????? HELLO
> 
> brutum fulmen: senseless lightning, meaningless thunderbolt, etc., or 'an empty threat'; i wrote it as a passing, distant thought arcade had due to the feeling, rather than for the figurative meaning  
> omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori: love conquers all things; let us yield to love


End file.
